


Appearance of Truth

by goldarrow



Series: Silent!Stephen [3]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 20:01:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7905754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldarrow/pseuds/goldarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helen's machinations leave Ryan with a terrible decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appearance of Truth

 

 

Stephen woke slowly, his head pounding and his mouth as dry as a Silurian desert. Leaving his eyes closed, he listened. There was no sound of anyone moving, just the hiss of an air conditioning unit whispering into the silence. When he took a deep breath, all he could smell was dust; there were no chemical odours nor scents of nature in the air. So, he had to be inside a room, either with no windows or closed windows. And since there wasn’t any bright light shining on his eyelids from any particular direction, he assumed it was a room with no windows.

 

Taking a chance, he opened his eyes a fraction and glanced quickly around. He was lying on a bare bed in the corner of a room, with his arms tied above his head to the bars of the bedstead. There were no windows on any wall, and only one door straight ahead of him. The overhead light wasn’t excessively bright; just enough for him to see clearly. He had no idea where he was, and no idea how he’d got here. The last thing he remembered was leaving his and Ryan’s house.

 

They'd been together now for six months, since he'd been found in one of Helen Cutter's laboratories by Ryan's team and taken back to the ARC. He might be only an unvoiced clone of the first, lost Stephen Hart, but he was a perfect genetic match, and he had all of the original Hart's memories. After a very rocky initial few weeks, Ryan had finally accepted that this Stephen loved him as much as the first, and that loving him in return wouldn’t be a betrayal of the man he had lost.

 

Stephen had been on his way to meet Ryan at their favourite restaurant for an undeclared but nonetheless celebratory anniversary dinner. He’d opened his car door, and everything had gone black. Wracking his brain to try to remember any details only made his head increase its ache from pounding to pneumatic drill level, so he backed off. When the click of the door latch heralded an arrival, he shut his eyes quickly, feigning unconsciousness and remaining as limp as he could while the footsteps drew closer.

 

“I know you’re awake, Stephen.” It was Helen’s voice, Helen’s own familiar tone of superior mockery.  “Look up to your right.”

 

Tensing a little but keeping his breathing slow and even, Stephen opened his eyes and glared at her for a moment before giving a fleeting look in the indicated direction. Set into the junction of walls and ceiling was the circular lens of a camera. He breathed out slowly and relaxed again. With that electronic eye on him, he was as stuck as if he were in quicksand.

 

“Good boy,” Helen crooned as she stepped right up next to him and stroked his hair.

 

He shuddered in revulsion. He hadn’t told Ryan, he hadn’t had the courage to tell anyone about the one last thing Helen had done to him when she made him. A few people had guessed, but there was no actual proof of her final ‘modification’. It was bad enough that he was mute from a lack of vocal cords, and that he lived with the potential of arousing any male in the vicinity from the pheromones he emitted whenever he was nervous. But Helen had also managed to enhance his sexual response to her specific scent of arousal, her own voice when she desired him. In his early days at the ARC, he’d overheard someone refer to him as an organic sex toy because of his pheromone response, and that was exactly what he felt like right now. He hardened in his trousers, and tried to turn away so she couldn’t see the tears of misery and fury that were starting to fill his eyes.

 

Helen removed his boots, socks, trousers and briefs with quick efficiency and dropped them on the floor beside the bed, then just as rapidly doffed her own lower garments. Swinging her leg across him, she settled onto him, pressed him into the mattress, and started moving. She slid up and down on his hard cock, gasping with pleasure as his struggles inadvertently deepened the strokes.

 

Realising he was only helping her get off, Stephen stopped fighting and went limp, eyes squeezed firmly shut and lips pressed tightly together. Helen immediately twisted his nipples sharply to bring his attention back to her. Panting with the combined pain from her nails and the forced pleasure from her tight cunt squeezing him as she rode him, Stephen went rigid.

 

“That’s better,” she whispered, speeding her movements and adding a slight twist as she rose and fell, pulling more gasps from him.

 

He started shaking his head, trying desperately to pretend this wasn’t happening, that she didn’t have this kind of power over him as she took her pleasure from his body. When he felt her gasp and tighten around him in her climax, squeezing rhythmically, he bit back a silent sob of distress. And when she leaned forward and kissed him, forcing her tongue into his mouth, he had to call on every bit of control he had not to bite it off.

 

Helen chuckled as she slid off him. “You never learn, do you, Stephen?” she asked, grabbing his chin to force him to look at her. “I was in a hurry when I left last time and I may have had to ditch you, but I still own you. I made you, you belong to me, and I can destroy you whenever I wish. Remember that, and cooperate. It might save your miserable life.” She dressed quickly, and sauntered over to the door. Giving him a quick grin, she opened the door to show the line of Cleaner clones waiting outside. Laughing at his look of horror, she repeated, “Cooperate,” as she walked out, motioning the first of the men into the room.

 

Knowing that his own fear and disgust were increasing the level of his pheromone emanation, Stephen did his best to throttle down his emotions. He failed miserably as the first Cleaner marched straight up to him and flipped him onto his stomach. Knowing that he couldn’t fight, he relaxed as much as he could to try to minimise any damage. Stephen counted himself very lucky that the master template for these clones hadn’t been excessively endowed. In contrast to his bulky body, the Cleaner’s cock had been only average length and fairly slender.

 

The Cleaner squirted a decent amount of lubricant onto Stephen’s arse and pressed in with no other preliminaries, opening him up with cock instead of fingers. Breathing deeply, Stephen buried his face in his arms, doing his best to think about anything except what was happening to him. The cock pushed in steadily until it was balls-deep inside him, then started moving in short, sharp thrusts.

 

Stephen hissed through his teeth, feeling his own cock being scraped along the mattress by the movement in his arse. Hating the feeling as his cock filled from the friction, Stephen squeezed his arsehole tight in an attempt to hurry things along. It worked. Three short strokes more, and the Cleaner was grunting through his climax. The clone pulled out of Stephen, straightened his clothes, and walked away without any further acknowledgement of his existence.

 

Then the next one arrived. He, too, used the lubricant before sinking into Stephen’s body and starting to thrust. Stephen’s erection, which had begun wilting the moment the first clone had stopped moving, began to fill once more. He took a deep breath and tightened up again, with the same result: a rapid climax from the man pressing him down.

 

When the third arrived, Stephen knew he couldn’t continue to force the issue. The second one had made him feel a little sore, and without knowing how many more Cleaners were outside waiting for him, he had to be a bit more circumspect. The one thing that made this all bearable was that he knew it really didn’t have anything to do with him. He was just a convenient receptacle for their come; they might as well have been using a masturbator. So all he had to do was stay as relaxed as he could and hang on until the end; and he’d had a lot of practice at that.

 

So he waited, and drifted, face hidden as he closed his eyes and went away. This time, no one stopped him so he was able to pretend he was elsewhere. He tried imagining that he and Ryan were together on the other side of an anomaly, lying in the middle of a field at night mapping out the differences in star patterns. But that was too close to his desires; bringing the thought of Ryan anywhere near his current predicament made him nauseous, so he altered the imagery to simple nothingness. By ignoring the thrusting that was beginning to scrape his channel in spite of the lubricant and come, ignoring the bouncing of the mattress and the rubbing of his own cock on the material, he was able to float, completely dissociated. 

 

When he finally returned to his body, he realised to his surprise that he was alone. He was cold and shivering, he felt sick to his stomach, his head was stuffed from stifled tears, and his arse felt like an entire nest of wasps had stung him. But he was alive, and from what he could tell as he rolled over on the bed, he wasn’t bleeding. That was a plus.

 

After sending a quick glare at the camera in the corner just in case, he examined the bonds on his wrists. They were a thin rope rather than the ubiquitous cable-ties that the SF forces used. Those were impossible to get out of without leaving behind severe damage; in comparison, this would be easy. Hitching himself up on the mattress, he started to pick at the knots with his teeth. If his luck was bad and he was being watched, someone would be in to stop him. If he wasn’t under surveillance then there was a chance he could get away. Granted, a very small chance, but Stephen wasn’t in any mood to examine gift-horses’ dentition right now.

 

His luck was bad. He’d only managed to loosen one of the knots when three Cleaner clones entered the room. Two held him down while the third cut the rope holding his hands. They pulled him to his feet, and ignoring his wobbly knees and inability to balance, they stuffed his legs into his trousers, yanked them up and zipped them. Keeping his arms bent up behind him for control, they marched him out of the room and down a hallway. They ended up in a large room dominated by two bulky boxes with solid backs and sides, and what looked from this angle like partially glass fronts. Stephen shuddered. They looked like upright coffins, with wires running across the floor to a computer sitting on a table against the far wall. He could see Helen speaking into a microphone attached to the same computer, but couldn’t make out what she was saying.

 

When they got all the way around to the front of the coffin-things, he could see that his first impression had been correct. The top half of the box fronts were glass. His eyes narrowed. Glass meant breakable; but that hope was dashed by Helen’s next words.

 

“It’s Plexiglas, it won’t break,” she stated as she walked up to him.

 

The clones held him still as the door opened again. Stephen’s eyes widened as he stared at someone who looked exactly like him being manhandled into the room by two more clones. The captive was struggling madly and cursing a blue streak.

 

Stephen stared at Helen, wondering what the fuck she was planning. He didn’t have to wait long to find out. The Cleaner clones wrestled both of them into the boxes, tied them in and aimed what looked like oversized hypodermic needles at their necks.

 

“Ryan and his team are on their way,” Helen said with a crooked smile. “They’re going to be given a choice when they get here. A choice between the two of you: a real Stephen from another timeline, or a defective clone.”

 

Stephen started shaking as he stared first at Helen then at the other Stephen, who was in turn staring back and forth between Helen and him with a look of utter shock on his face. The other man’s swearing had dropped to silence.

 

Dear God. How could she do this? Stephen’s face must have asked the question for him, because Helen cocked her head and sauntered over to him.

 

“I’ve decided you’re too much trouble, Stephen. You had your last chance today and you failed. We feed you and keep you clean; and in return, you keep trying to escape and we have to watch you all the time. You’re not worth it.” She reached out and stroked his cheek one last time. “At least with a vibrator, all I have to do is buy batteries.” Turning to her men, she ordered, “Lock the covers down and set the sensors on them.”

 

The Cleaner clones obeyed quickly. Once all the electronics were hooked up to the box cover latches, Helen moved over to the computer and started a program running.

 

“Out the door,” she ordered, and the clones left the room. She clicked the ‘Go’ icon and walked out without another word to the two men locked in the boxes.

 

xXx

 

Captain Tom Ryan, of Her Majesty’s Special Forces, signalled for his team to break down the door fronting them. Two hours ago, Helen Cutter had texted Sir James Lester, on his personal number no less, that Stephen was being held here. No one knew whether to believe her, but they decided they couldn’t take the chance and a team was dispatched to this address in a rundown industrial park.

 

When Stephen had disappeared the evening before, Ryan had been ready to take London apart to find him. Knowing how edgy Ryan was, Lester had planned to send Captain Stringer’s team, but Ryan had flatly refused to stand down. After examining the captain thoroughly, Lester had nodded and sent him out, with the stipulation that Ryan and his team please show a little discretion.

 

The door yielded quickly to a rather indiscreet metal ram and a couple of kicks, and the team entered rapidly, fanning out with eyes searching and weapons tracking along. Ryan ordered Fiver on guard at the door as they took in the sight of the two boxes in the centre of the room. Lyle and Blade moved swiftly around to the other side, weapons ready. The look of shock on their faces immediately pulled Ryan and Ditzy to join them. All four men were still staring at the two Stephens tied up in the boxes when Finn noticed a clock counting down the last few seconds to zero on the computer screen at the far side of the room.

 

Finn opened his mouth to warn them, but ran out of time; as the countdown reached zero there was a click which brought every weapon to ready, and Helen Cutter’s voice purred out of the computer’s speakers.

 

“Welcome, Captain Ryan. In front of you are two Stephen Harts. The one on your left is a ‘real’ Stephen. He’s from an alternate timeline; he followed me through and I really have no use for him. The one on your right is your current lover. Now, you have a simple choice to make. You can save one, and only one, of them: a real Stephen, or the defective copy. The moment either one of the boxes is unlatched, the other Stephen will be injected with the venom from a future evolution of the Brazilian Wandering Spider. It has a highly potent neurotoxin that will lead to asphyxiation and death within a couple of minutes. There is no antivenom for it. If you do not choose at all, they will both be injected five minutes after this recording ends. Choose wisely.”

 

There was another click, and the countdown started again, the numbers dropping from 5:00 to 4:59, to 4:58, as the team all turned to look at Ryan. The captain was as pale and unmoving as a marble statue, only his eyes tracking back and forth between the two captives.

 

After one glance at Ryan, Lyle gave the orders. “Right, lads, check the locking mechanisms and the fucking computer. You have three minutes.”

 

The Stephen on the left, the one Helen had referred to as ‘real’, began struggling in his bonds, calling for them to let him out; pleading for his life. Ryan’s lover, the clone Stephen, simply looked at Ryan for a moment with tears brimming, then mouthed, “I love you,” before taking his lower lip in his teeth and closing his eyes, allowing the tears to track slowly down his cheeks.

 

Ryan almost lost it at the level of trust the clone was showing. It was obvious to the captain that his lover was going to accept any decision that Ryan made, even if it meant his own death. Ryan walked over to the other box, where the ‘real’ Stephen was trapped. The man was still begging for them to release him.

 

Ryan stopped in front of the box and placed his hand on the glass. “Tell me who you are,” he said.

 

“I’m Stephen Hart, please, I’m Stephen Hart. Helen Cutter came back after disappearing for two years. She told me about the anomalies! I wanted to see the past. God, I just wanted to see what I’d been studying for so long! Please, let me go. I want to go home! Please!” The man broke down, his face twisted as he sobbed openly.

 

Ryan saw Blade glance up from where he was examining the locking mechanism, his face expressionless. Ryan raised an eyebrow.

 

Blade shrugged as he stood. “I can’t see any way to clear the sensors within the time limit without setting it off.” He glanced sideways at the still crying Hart in front of Ryan. “He’s a lot younger than ours.” With that statement, he headed over to the computer where Finn was still growling over the keyboard as he tried to find a back door into the program.

 

Ryan realised what Blade meant by that terse sentence. If Ryan chose this Stephen, he would lose his lover. This Stephen didn’t know him, didn’t care about him, and wouldn’t want to stay in their world.  Ryan looked over at the box holding his lover.

 

Ditzy shook his head. “Nothing here.” He came over to face Ryan. “We’re going to have to choose,” he said bluntly.

 

The captain turned his back and walked over to the outside wall. He placed both hands on the bricks and bowed his head. How could he choose? The Stephen Hart that Helen had coaxed through to this timeline was innocent. He hadn’t meant any harm, he’d done nothing to deserve death. He was evidently young and impressionable, but he didn’t deserve to die. On the other hand, his clone Stephen, his lover, was also innocent. Some might say he wasn’t ‘real’ so he had less claim to rescue, but Ryan didn’t believe that. No matter the circumstances of his creation, he still lived. And Ryan loved him.

 

The soldier took a deep breath and stood up straight. Turning to Lyle, he asked, “Time?”

 

Lyle replied, “Two minutes.”

 

Ryan nodded. “Right. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

 

He explained, and the men moved into position: Ryan and Blade on the clone Stephen’s box, Lyle and Ditzy on the box holding the young Stephen from the alternate timeline. Ryan and Lyle grasped their respective latches, Blade and Ditzy the edges of the box fronts. They were going to attempt to open both.

 

“Finn, time,” Ryan said.

 

“One minute, ten seconds.”

 

“Okay, at one minute, we open. Call it.”

 

Ryan and Lyle set themselves. The alternate Stephen had finally fallen silent; it looked as if he was praying. Ryan looked at his Stephen, who had opened his eyes to watch. The clone smiled at him and nodded, then closed his eyes again to avoid distracting them.

 

Finn’s voice started up. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Now!”

 

Hoping that one day he would be able to forgive himself, Ryan yanked his latch open before Finn finished the word, so that Lyle was a fraction of a second behind him.

 

Blade pulled hard and Ryan’s cover opened easily. Lyle was quick enough that his latch opened also, but their cover stuck for a second as Ditzy heaved on it. Ryan reached in and snapped the straps holding his Stephen. There was a quick bang and the young Stephen screamed. Ryan’s Stephen collapsed into his arms, clutching him hard, fingers clamped around the material of his blacks, head tucked into Ryan’s shoulder as he started sobbing silently. Lyle and Ditzy finally wrenched their cover open and wrestled the young Stephen out of the straps holding him, but it was too late.

 

The young Stephen convulsed, face purpling as his breathing shut down and he tried desperately to pull air into lungs that no longer worked. Ditzy knelt beside him, cradling him as his body relaxed into death. The medic closed the young man’s eyes and laid his body down gently before standing up, stalking over to the inner wall and punching a hole in the plaster. He remained there, leaning on the wall with his head cradled on his forearm and his eyes shut.

 

Lyle started cursing. “Fucking bitch. I swear I am going to fucking kill that woman the next time she shows her fucking face.” He stared defiantly at Ryan. “Have me up on charges if you want to, boss, but I shoot to kill the moment I see her again.”

 

Still holding his Stephen, who was doing a superb imitation of a limpet, Ryan shook his head. “I think you’ll have trouble shooting faster than any of us, after this one.” Stroking Stephen’s back, he whispered to his lover, “Are you okay?”

 

Stephen didn’t move anything except his head, which managed a tiny nod as he started to relax a little, his silent sobs gradually letting up. Ryan remained crouched there, holding and stroking him as he calmed. When he was breathing more evenly, Ryan helped him to stand, but kept an arm around him as his knees wobbled. Ryan motioned Blade over and tried to coax Stephen into leaning on the other soldier for a minute. The clone refused to let Ryan go until Ryan glanced over at Ditzy with concern. Stephen immediately transferred his weight to the knife-man, who helped him over to sit gingerly at the computer table as Ryan went across the room to clasp Ditzy’s shoulder.

           

“It’s not your fault,” Ryan said quietly. “You know that.”

 

“I didn’t get the door open in time,” Ditzy replied dully.

 

Ryan turned him so they faced each other, and looked straight into the medic’s eyes. “It stuck. And I think it stuck because I opened my latch first.”

 

Ditzy caught his breath and stared.

 

Ryan nodded. “Yes. I cheated. I wanted to save my Stephen so badly that I was willing to let that innocent man die.” He swallowed hard. “And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

 

Ditzy growled. “Fuck. The next time you plan something like that, tell me in advance, damn it. Or your next physical is going to include some exams you’re not going to like at all.”

 

Sighing, Ryan shook his head. “I couldn’t. I had to let that poor bastard have some hope.”

 

“Ah, crap. Yeah. At least he went out thinking we were trying.” The medic paused for a moment. “But we were; we had no way to tell just how sensitive the instruments were. And we’ll never know whether the box stuck because you went first, or because he’d been struggling and bouncing around.”

 

“You won’t make me feel better.” Ryan ran his hands through his hair. “I made my choice.”

 

Ditzy was opening his mouth to reply when Finn yelled, “Boss, get over here! You both have to hear this.”

 

Ryan and Ditzy immediately headed across the room to where Finn, Lyle and Blade were sitting, looking stunned, and Stephen was hugging himself, tears trickling down his cheeks. Once the officers got close, Finn typed in a command and Helen Cutter’s voice filled the room. The soldier quickly lowered the volume and the two men listened in shock to the words they would have heard if the other door latch had been opened first, if Ryan had chosen to save the younger Stephen over the clone.

 

“Congratulations, Captain Ryan. You’ve lost your silent lover, but I’m afraid you can’t console yourself with the fact that you’ve saved an innocent man. This Stephen has a heart condition that is going to kill him in a few months. Or sooner, if he exerts himself too much. Something went wrong when I created him. Oh, I suppose I forgot to tell you. He’s a clone, too. So now you’ve lost both of them. Back off, Captain. Stop interfering with my research. I can be very creative with punishment, as you’ve just seen.”

 

There was a click, and the men all started breathing again. Ditzy muttered, “Fucking bitch,” and motioned for Finn to help him get a body bag for the dead clone. Lyle and Blade headed out with them to gather the gear they would need in order to destroy all the equipment in the room.

 

Ryan’s knees gave out and he leaned on the table to stay upright. “Jesus,” was all he could choke out. Then he felt hands on his shoulders, and he turned around and gathered Stephen into his arms. Holding him close, he whispered, “Let’s go home.”

 

Stephen nodded, smiling as he traced Ryan’s eyebrow with a gentle finger. He mouthed, “I love you,” again, and Ryan whispered back, “I love you, too.”

 

End

 

 


End file.
